A Quick Look at TV: SCIENCE FICTION THEATRE

   Science Fiction Theatre was one of the first genre anthology shows, sporting a who's who of beloved character actors noted for their work in B movies. The most recurring guest stars of the series seemed to be Marshall Thompson, Bruce Bennett, and Bill Williams. Other guest stars included the likes of Vincent Price, Victor Jory, Kenneth Tobey, Whit Bissell, Ed Kemmer, and on and on. The host was genial actor/radio announcer Truman Bradley (pictured), his authoritarian voice essential to grounding an anthology series concerned with elements of the fantastic and their relation to science. Early episodes in particular were focused on hard science fiction, so much so as to be almost atheistic in their approach. Whether it was viewer complaint or observance from someone on the crew, this condition was rectified and the remainder of the series took on a much more faithful tone. Perhaps the oddest thing about Science Fiction Theatre is that the first season was shot in full color -at a time when very few television sets had the ability to receive color broadcast! Likely to reduce production costs, the second season was filmed in black and white. Subjects ranged from communication with beings from space to fantastic murder investigations in which the weapon or clue was some piece of cutting edge technology. Bradley would open each episode by demonstrating some scientific principal or new area of research which had inspired that week's story. There's really no such thing as a 'typical' episode to point to as an example, since the series covered so much ground. Engaging, thought-provoking, dramatic, the series avoided the Bug Eyed Monster pulp aspects of popular science fiction -which ultimately may be why the show faded into relative obscurity. Infamously, one episode inspired the screenplay for the Universal International smash TARANTULA! in 1955. The complete series was issued on DVD, but there were technical issues of some sort involving the color correction for title transition scenes. Though able to be fixed, it was apparently expensive to do so and only the first episode received the full restoration. The other color episodes have stretches of black and white footage where these transitions occur. Reportedly, a bluray release is correcting that issue.